YHBA

When I Crossed No-Bob by Margaret McMullan Jordan Sonnenblick Emma Jean Lazarus

Idea: When I was in elementary school and working with Battle of the Books, the media specialists chose the books and each created approximately 25 questions for each book. One person coordinated the questions for the district contest.

At my own school, in addition to the team going to the contest, I had a web team of 5th graders who created a web page about each book. We also had BOB's Museum in the commons area display cases. Students (any student who had read the books could participate) could be curators and create displays pertinent to the books and cards about each object they found or created for the museum. Examples included: a pencil with the word FRINDLE replacing the brand name and card explaining, a bunch of plastic grapes with a card stating that Esperanza in Esperanza Rising helped pick grapes, a burka (brought in by a parent--many students were from Iraq) on the school skeleton with a note that said women in Afghanistan were required to wear burkas, maps detailing locations in the BOB books and other items the students thought explained the books.

Being on any part of the BOB team was a big honor--the kids came and ate lunch with me in the library to discuss the books and practice, they got T-shirts stating they were team members (district created shirts), and were recognized at school assemblies and in letters home to parents.

I am sure there are a lot of other great ideas out there--I thought the kids got a lot out of the museum myself.

-- Cheryl Youse, MLS Media Specialist Colquitt County High School cyouse@gmail.com

What I loved to do with 5th graders every year was our own kid-directed version of Battle. (I wrote about it in the first Books Kids Will Sit Still For, way back when, and I'm too lazy to rewrite it from scratch right now, so I'll cut & paste the text below.) In the In What Book Game, the kids were in charge of writing three questions, one for each book they chose to use. They then wrote out their own game cards on color-banded catalog cards (remember those?), and each 5th grade class had its own color. While Battle asks many questions about each of, say 15 books, testing children's literal comprehension skills, the In What Book Game was more of a book motivation game, where kids would answer questions about more than 100 books. (If there were 20 kids in a class, each picked 3 fiction books they had read and loved, and wrote one question about each book. So there were 60 questions per team, with 2 teams facing off, making it a game of 120 questions. If all the classes were bigger that year, I'd have the children just do 2 questions each, but that still represented about 100 books.)

Here's what I wrote about the game in Books Kids Will Sit Still For:

[Play the In What Book Game, which I developed after reading the over four hundred questions about children's books in Ruth Harshaw and Hope Harshaw Evans's In What Book (Macmillan, 1970). Third through sixth graders can play this one. Using fiction books the library owns and that they have read, students each write two or three plot statement questions, beginning with the words, "In what book." Try these:

a.  In what book do Bran and Fiona travel back in time to ancient Ireland with a boy who can transform himself into a fish? b.  In what book do Marv the Magnificent and Raymond the Rat search through a cash register to find who bought a doll baby carriage with their friend Fats still inside it? c.  In what book do a brother and sister run away from home and spend a week hiding out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City?

ANSWERS: a. The Wizard Children of Finn by Mary Tannen b. The Great Rescue Operation by Jean Van Leeuwen c. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

Once the children have written their questions and answers, submitted them to you for approval and comments, and rewritten them as needed, hold a class practice session. Players need to read each question clearly and slowly. Two classes can compete against each other, with one, two and three point rounds. (If the classes are large, we only play two rounds so there's time to finish.) Teams alternate reading their own questions aloud, and points are given when any player on the opposite team correctly volunteers a title. We give a bonus point for each author identified.

Here are some more details: I was careful about approving the books children picked to use. They would try to read fiction books they thought no one else would know, and that's fine, within reason. If too many of books are obscure, then the game drags. Also, each team could only use a book once, so you didn't have 3 kids using, say, Ramona the Pest. It was entirely possible, though, that someone in another class would write a question about the same book, and that was fine.

I always did this project--which took 6 weeks, but can be done in 4--at the end of the year, as a final blast before the fifth graders moved up to middle school. We'd announce the scores over the loudspeaker each day, and younger kids would say, enviously, "I can't wait to be in 5th grade so I can play In What Book!"

Here's the breakdown: WEEK 1: Introduce the activity. With each class, do a series of 1-sentence "In What Book" booktalks, using a variety of books, from well-known to not-so, but all titles you know they'd love. Have children guess each title, and then you hold up the book and identify the full title and author's name. ("Ooohhh. Can I have that one?" "Sure!" Hand out books on demand as you finish each one.) Explain how the game works, and urge students to go over the list of books they've read and loved this year, and check out new ones to read, too. Write several questions with them, using chart paper, to demonstrate how to do it.

Pick a book they all know and have them write a question collaboratively. Analyze what makes a good question. Ask them to compile and bring along a list of possible fiction books as an assignment for the following week. If you're collaborating with teachers on this (which is optimal, of course, if you can swing it), have kids write their 3 questions in class or for homework, and bring them to the library for your next session.

WEEK 2: Children write and/or edit their In What Book questions. You need to approve each book. (If it's very obscure and you know no one has read it all year, don't approve it. Like Gay Neck, The Pigeon. Unless your kids are really into old old Newbery winners. Which they probably aren't.) Even if you're only playing 2 rounds, have them write 3 questions so they can pick their favorite 2 to use in the game. (Discuss again what makes a good question, including adding enough interesting and intriguing information so the book can't be confused with another one, but not too much info to make it easy. Here's a pretty bad question: IN WHAT BOOK does a boy learn how to eat fried worms? Here's a pretty good one: IN WHAT BOOK does an orphan who lives in the walls of a Paris train station get caught when he tries to steal a wind-up toy from an old man's toy shop?)

WEEK 3: Finish writing and editing questions. Have kids pair up to read each other's questions for clarity, accuracy, and iveliness. Have them double check facts, correct spelling of titles, authors, characters, and then some. After you give final approval to each set of questions, have them copy their questions and answers over very neatly onto game cards. Catalog cards are the perfect size for them to hold during the game. Have them decide which question should be worth one (easiest), two (harder), or three (hardest) points, and number their cards.

WEEK 4: Practice session. Kids read their questions aloud to the rest of the class, slowly and with expression. Other kids in the class guess titles and authors. By the end of the practice session, they will have heard all of the questions and be familiar with titles and authors. This will help tremendously when they play with another class. Sometimes you don't even need to have read a book to correctly guess the title or author.

WEEK 5: The Big Competition. One class plays another. It's all very exciting. Set up two or three rows of chairs facing another two or three rows, with an aisle down the middle. The teachers sit at one end as scorers. Use a chart or board for scoring--make a nice score sheet. Have teachers keep the score board turned away from the kids. If a team knows it's behind, the kids can get demoralized and miss easy questions. Hiding the score helps players stay energized and enthusiastic. You sit at the other end as moderator. The first child stands up and reads his 1-point question. The other team has 10 (20? 30?) seconds to answer. If more than one child raises her hand, the class's teacher picks someone to answer. If that child know the title, she gets a point, and if she knows the author, a bonus point. Then a child from the other team stands up and asks his question. And so on. Go back and forth, down the row, until all the one point questions are asked. Move into Round 2, where each question is worth 2 point, with a third point if the child knows the author's name. And then round 3, if you're ambitious and have the time.

WEEK 6: Competition continues. I had each class play at least 2 of the other classes. Each game takes a good hour. The trick is, you need to have each class ask exactly the same number of questions. So if your classes have 20, 23, and 24 kids, make 20 your benchmark number of questions for each round. During the competition, if you have one class with 20 and another with 23, at random, ask 3 kids to hand you their 1-point questions, another 3 to hand over their 2-pointers, and, if you're doing 3 rounds, yet another 3 to give up their 3-pointers. This makes the number of questions exactly the same for each class. To figure out the #1 class, tally up all their scores, and the winning class will have the highest total score.

The In What Book Game brought my fifth graders together with a shared purpose--to read everything in sight--and made them aware of all the wonderful books out there. They all got to participate, and usually every person answered at least one question and often more. They could answer a question even if they'd never read the book but recognized the description, which happened often. In What Book questions are really one-sentence booktalks, and hearing the other kids' questions would get everyone motivated to read those books. Afterwards, I used to make up a booklet of their questions, with all the answers at the back, and hand it out to each child as a great supplement to their summer reading lists. We're all winners when we read.

If you decide to try this with your students, do let me know how it works out. That's one thing I really miss about being a school librarian--working with kids on a week to week basis. So it's always fun to do it vicariously.